Whispers In The Dark
by arctique48
Summary: Conversation your outlet in the dark and in the pain. His memory became your sanity. His voice became your world. You hated him, but in so many ways he saved you.
1. Default Chapter

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR...**

**AN:** I'm revamping old stories, trying to un-emo this a bit. I am aware that were is a way to do this without deleting everything and starting from scratch – but my computer is adamant that I shouldn't be allowed to do that; it had a major crash the other week and I've been suffering the consequences ever since – it never liked at the best of times.

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Chapter One 

-

It is cold.

You can feel blood trickling slowly down your back and it tickles. You twist slightly, chains creaking, metal on metal. If you could move just an inch more you may be able to stop it, that godforsaken itch…

It doesn't work. You feel like pouting as the cold slips over your vertebrae. An involuntary shudder and it pauses. Your relief shows itself in a sigh, echoing through the darkness of your cell.

Breathing in and you taste that familiar metallic scent on the air. You don't think it can have been more than a few hours since their last visit; the wounds are clearly still fresh.

You wonder in silence if your cellmate heard. You were never sure why it bothers you so much but the thought of him seeing you weak always made you cringe… Did they visit him too? He's surprisingly quiet considering… perhaps he isn't conscious...

It is a strange relationship you two have… You have thought it many times. If you were to be told back then that this was how you would live out the rest of your life you would have laughed; now you would cry were your tears not spent.

He must think it strange too… Before there was world domination, ultimate destruction, and above all else: power. Now he has nothing left but you. You, four walls and that blocked out window, too high to reach, too small to shed light. Forever it taunts you both.

_They sit in darkness always. Years have passed and now they are so different to how they looked before. He is as much a prisoner as her, strapped in manacles to a filthy wall with only rags for warmth, yet her unseeing eyes still look at him through the darkness as a spoiled aristocrat, silken hair and pristine robes. Her body is broken, face distorted, but to him she is still the bushy haired schoolgirl, so righteous and bright. To him her eyes would never go out._

Slumped against the cold stone wall. It is damp. Perhaps it is raining outside… It has been months and years since you were first bought here, difficult to tell exactly how long when the only link you have to the world outside your cell is that slither of light and the torturers that just wont let you die. You wonder what the world looks like now… has much changed since that final battle? Is Hogwarts standing? Do the muggles fight as you once did? You know they can never win. If Harry failed then so did all humanity.

You find it strange to think of something like that. How can someone, just one person, mean so much? It is only in stories that a single hero is capable of ridding the world of evil… But you discovered half a lifetime ago that there was truth in so many of the fairytales you lived for as a child.

Forever never passes and you almost laugh at the pain. You tell yourself the torture doesn't matter anymore, that it is as you thought it might be, all those years ago when the sun was high and your friends living; a state of mind, and one you've left behind. You tell yourself it doesn't hurt.

_In the fairytales there were countless Princesses, imprisoned in high towers, rescued by Prince Charming to be whisked of into the sunset and live happily ever after. _But as with many things that so recently came to light, it is not that simple. You are no princess, just a little girl who lost all semblance of innocence far too young. Your prison lies under the earth, not even angel wings can reach you here… Prince Charming is a thought you would rather not dwell on, and sunset endings can never happen with Darkness triumphant.

It has been so long now… you barely remember what it was to feel sunlight on your face. Your only interaction is with those gaolers who never cease to hurt you, even in your dreams, and the Voice. The voice with the face of a memory. Him. It has kept you living, kept you sane. Through these years imprisoned that conversation is all you have to live for and by its will you are kept going… Though as the blood falls and spells drive harder, faster, deeper, you wonder if that is really something to be thankful for…

-

You hated him with all your heart and soul. Merciful you were renowned as, ever forgiving, but stubbornness was something you were born to and with him you could not (would not) forget. Your grudge held even when your friends welcomed him in his sudden change of side. You think it was his family that died? Perhaps, details are fuzzy, but he joined your army and for a while at least he was a savoir of the Light, helping Harry master the darkness while onlookers followed in disbelief. You hated him then out of habit and in bitterness of his newfound popularity. Even as your friends accepted him you watched with distrust.

You realised later that he had not changed sides seeking salvation, redemption, or any moral reward. He honestly thought he was saving his own skin. He had played the game of power since the day he was born and delighted in his ability to foresee the outcomes of situations.

_He played them so well… _

Crossing, double-crossing, betrayal and false promises, and he had the world in his palm. His apparent lack of humanity came from his expressed understanding of the way they work. He knew what made people tick. He could put himself in their shoes and know what they would think to do next. He had outsmarted the Ministry, the Order, the Death Eaters and every time came out on top.

He trusted his abilities to the extent he changed sides when the War did not seem to go his way. Brave, cunning and ignorant all in one. His expertise lay in manipulation of the human mind and he forgot that he had made himself an enemy in the unknown. The Dark Lord Voldemort was no more human than he was sane, and overlooking that was the downfall of that proud, stubborn boy.

Unpredictable as the demon was, he read him wrong.

When darkness triumphed and descended in its masses, you blamed him for not knowing, when it was needed most. You blamed him for the death of your friends and the fear in your heart. You blamed him for your doubt and your failure and above all you blamed him for surviving when no other had. You hated him with all your heart and awaited his return to his home (for he truly belonged in the dark).

The battle had ended and you were alone together in the Order Headquarters, the last of your army of Light. Neither talked, too consumed in raw emotion to acknowledge another sinful undeserver in a world when saints were burned and criminals free. When footsteps broke your wallowing you blamed him and awaited your destruction, but as the door swung open and black figures sprung he knocked you from their aim. Together you fought and fought and wished you died, but as the undeserved survivors you were you were gifted prolonged existence.

You hated him for saving you that day. You hated him for the apology in his eyes as he knocked you to the floor. You hated him for the life that still ran daggers through your veins and you hated him for his loyalty when it no longer mattered. Together you were damned before the Dark Lord; the most loathed of his living enemies, you were not to escape with only death. The little girl that assisted every attempt to destroy him and resisted capture for so long, and the little boy who turned coat to join those fools that now lay beyond the grave.

With contempt he left you with your life and instead caged you, a hidden mockery of your famed mercy in battle. You were no longer Prisoners of War. The War was over. Now you were simply captives, guinea pigs for his new experiments, play things to ease his boredom. Iron bound your wrists. Instant torture dulled your senses.

They hung you together. They seemed to think it fitting, two enemies, the golden girl and the traitor. 'How quaint' they said as they stripped you of your magic. You remember he spat in their faces and snapped crude threats of blackmail and revenge. You all knew they were empty but for that moment your hate flickered to pride.

You hated him then, as they dragged you both, kicking and screaming, to a cell hewn from the very rock of the earth. You hated him because he could kick harder, because he made them jump back and stun him. You hated him because all you could do was shout and cry.

As you reached the door you met his eyes, a slice of moonlight in the midday sun. For that moment everything you ever thought of him was undone. In that moment he was pure and he was good. In that moment you loved him and despaired.

You took in everything you could of each other, eyes drinking the very essence of him as it was the last fraction of goodness you would ever see. Then they threw you through the door and it was gone. Complete darkness, and his image burned into your mind.

-

The pain was unceasing and you hated him then for never screaming. You wept to the floor, wishing to crumple but the chains held you open and vulnerable. They whipped you, cursed you, raped you and you cried and screamed and wished over and over again to die. You heard their curses, harsher, faster, spoken with relish as they punished him for his betrayal, but in the thick darkness you didn't even see silhouettes and he never once made a sound. He was stronger than you perhaps. You hated him for that.

Time no longer existed with but a slither of light to guide you. Unconsciousness lapsed after their visits and awareness blurred. For months and days you suffered and wept and hated him with all your soul. That angel of light that hung in your dreams; you resented him for his night sky eyes and his classical beauty. You resented him for the way he let you see his soul that moment before the sun was shut out. You resented him for the way that memory was the only thing keeping you sane.

You resented him for the way, after an eternity or a moment of darkness and pain, he spoke to you.

Without warning, from the dark it came; his voice so soft, yet so pained. Shattering the heavy air in your black cell. It was hoarse, like a rotten aged rasping out his last request. So soft and yet so heavy in your mind. It echoed in your ears, bouncing off the walls for an eternity before you managed to focus on the words.

Recognition hit in a wave of warmth and maddened disbelief. You almost laughed, your throat protesting violently, so unused to any action past sobbing. The rasp that escaped you was more akin to a death rattle than any indicator of amusement. He stayed silent, awaiting your answer.

Summoning up your reserves of strength and near-forgotten Gryffindor courage you spoke back, ignoring the aching and the memories for the simple pleasure of something real to focus on.

"Are you alright?"

"Never Better."

And so it began.

-

**Subliminal Messages:** Review... review... Reviewwww...


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR**

**AN: **Angstfulness.

**-**

**Chapter Two**

**-**

Gods… it hurt so much. Disconnecting one lightening bullet at a time. Spells that shredded your bones, tore out your heart. The feeling of your capillaries slowly clogging with poison intensified by magic until the pain was the only thing left, all thought and recognition melting to blood and liquid mercury, expanding in your veins.

And then it was gone.

And they left.

Alone in the dark with spells and forced antidotes piecing your body back together from the inside out.

They would never let you die.

-

That slither of light that flickers and dies and flickers and dies as sun passes over moon which month by month changes yet remains your constant.

Sometimes you like to think that this is all just a phase of the moon.

At birth you were full. Full of light and purity, but as the moon wanes so did your innocence. You grew darker and darker until your spirit wore so thin it was but a crescent in the night skies. Now you have reached your ultimate darkness but something within you longs to believe that it is just a phase, and like the ever-changing moon, you'll become whole again.

-

You would never be entirely sure how it happened. But within the space of two torture sessions, he became your anchor.

"_Are you alright?"_

…"_Never Better."_

_A laugh (or groan, difficult to tell these days). "I'm glad."_

"_I hate you."_

"_I know."_

"_But you don't care."_

"_Should I?"_

"_I wouldn't."_

"_That's settled then."_

Tentative at first. Entirely avoiding the situation at hand. Best to focus on what you already know. You hate him, he hates you. Close your eyes and it is almost as though you're back at Hogwarts. Maybe Dumbledore let Filch use those manacles in the end… Yes. That was it. You're in detention with Malfoy, give it an hour or two and you'll be back in the Gryffindor Tower, Harry and Ron arguing over quidditch…

"_Do you hate me?"_

"_Should I?"_

…"_I would."_

"_Maybe in some other life, eh? Right now you're too far away to be hated."_

It wasn't good. Dependency was not something you liked the thought of. You had lasted all the years of that damned war without once relying solely on another person, but now, when there were no big battles, death-defying missions or constant plots against your life, you felt as though the world would crumble were he to stop talking. You didn't even like him! When had you become so weak?

"_Are you still there?"_

"_And where exactly do you think I might be going?"_

"_I dunno… I just needed to know."_

_He said nothing._

"_You know, I hate you, but I'm glad you're here."_

_He raised an eyebrow. She didn't see. "That could be _because_ you hate me. I can't see you longing to have Weasley hanging from the wall to be tortured alongside you."_

"_I didn't mean it that way! I'm just… glad I'm not alone. I don't want you tortured any more than I want it for myself."_

_A pause and then. "I have decided to take that as a compliment. Thank you, Granger."_

-

"Don't push me, Granger!"

"Or you'll do what? What's big bad _evil_ Malfoy going to do from way over there? Curse me?!"

"I should have fucking let them kill you back then! Then I wouldn't have to fucking well deal with you as well as them! You're driving me absolutely fucking INSANE!"

"GOOD! You're doing my head in! Why cant you just crawl into the corner and die in silence! It's always me, me, ME with you isn't it? Doesn't occur to you that I'm going through the exact same thing, when I didn't even betray them as you did! At least you had a say when you made them your enemies! I was born with it! Born with some defect that doesn't even _exist_! I'm being condemned for something that has nothing to do with me and it's not FAIR!"

"LIVE WITH IT!!"

"I wouldn't have to if it wasn't for _you_!! Why the HELL did you have to 'save' me back then? What was wrong with just leaving me to their Avada's? Hadn't I suffered enough?! This is all your fault! All of it! If you hadn't gone and switched sides _he_ wouldn't have got so mad so suddenly and gone and caught us by surprise! You gave him a reason to hit sooner than we expected and without _you_ we might have had a chance! Harry might have had a chance and Ron and Ginny and Lupin and Tonks might still have been living!"

"How the fuck can you say that? If it weren't for me you would have died that night at London Bridge! All of you! Potter and Weasley included! If it hadn't been for me then, all of you would have died _before_ you managed to get a final warning out the muggles!"

"Oh! And that was solely due to your pure heart was it, Malfoy? You saw us there and thought, my goodness, what a shame it would be for those nice people to burn to the ground with the rest of Muggle London? Did you? No! You saw us and thought it would be a great way to get back at your _father,_ for, what was it? Oh yes. Throwing a wine glass at you in company. Oh shock horror. What a wonderful reason to save the world."

"My reasoning's got nothing to do with it! I'm the only reason you got anywhere! I taught Potter how to block out _crucio_ for god's sake!"

"Oh please! You only did that so you could have an accepted reason to torture your number one enemy!"

"What?! I jumped in front of curses for him! Hardly something I'd do for someone I wanted dead!"

"Keeping up appearances Malfoy. That's what you purebloods are all about isn't it? Appearances and reputations. Maybe that was why you did it... To keep up that façade of yours for being so terribly, terribly daring and radical. You must have been _so_ proud. Had the whole world talking didn't you? When you changed sides. The new _hero_. You were only ever in it for the attention! Got bored of Pansy's whining did you? Thought you'd go establish another fan base? Well some of us were fighting for something more than that! And some of us lost _everything_ fighting for what we believed was right! Not just for ourselves, but for an entire world of people, who if all went well, would never even know we existed!"

"What appearances do you think I was trying to keep up?? I shattered just about every principle I was supposed to have when I joined Potter and lost every scrap of dignity I possessed when I tried time and time again for friendship, or at least a truce with a Mudblood that was so wrapped up in her petty prejudices and wounded pride that she couldn't even see a genuine plea for help when it was staring her in the face!"

"Petty prejudices?! I was not prejudiced! And what plea for help?! You got drunk and asked me to sleep with you! Neither a try for friendship or a truce and certainly not anything genuine!"

"Not just that time! I did everything I could and you just blocked me out! And you are! You're just about the most prejudiced person I've ever met!"

"I've met your father Draco Malfoy! You better take that back!"

"Or what?"

"I'll– Argh! You Bastard!"

The silence that followed was one of the most oppressive you could remember from your stay there in the dark. It was as if every particle in the room was so highly charged that the slightest movement or sound could cause the spark that would end the world.

You weren't going to apologise. What you had said you believed and he was the same. You were too stubborn back then. Too unaccustomed to a place where there was someone with more will to fight than you. Before you were superior for your ability to see goodness in the evil that tore your world apart and he was superior for his blood and his breeding and the way he had seen the darkness and rejected it. But now… Now you were the closest thing to equal you had ever been and bit by bit it was breaking you down. Crumbling those longstanding walls and prejudices.

But those walls and prejudices where the things that made you who you were… What would happen with them broken you did not know and so you fought against it… And fought against him. And he fought back… In those first few weeks (or months or years) it was almost like being home again. Back at Hogwarts, where he was Slytherin and you were Gryffindor and snakes were bad and lions good and all was simple and made sense…

But then there was the silence and you knew and he knew that you were further away from home than you had ever been before. And there was no going back.

-

_**If you've read it please review it!**_


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR**

**AN: **This is where the author cringes at her fifteen-year-old self and realises that she really just wrote up a thought process and tried to call it a story. Hmm. Again, Arctic Demon would like to remind you that this is NOT recent work.

**-**

**Chapter Three**

**-**

Black

You look across the planes of existence, the shadowed fields that lie empty in you head and you wonder in silence what it is that brings such a name about: Darkness. When did it become such a bad thing? Why should light take the name for what is good and pure? In the end it is light that is stronger. Light that triumphs and dark that is engulfed.

Darkness is where all things start, not on a fresh piece of white paper. In darkness things can be reborn. White, so easily tainted, so easily twisted and warped and coloured another kind of thing. Black is constant. Is that not what goodness should be? The goodness that endures, through the blood, the sweat and the pain. Stains that spread so easily through evil should never show on what is right. It should not matter. And in darkness it does not. In darkness there is room for growth but not for staining. Darkness is pure.

When a forest burns and all life is gone it is black that remains. From the ashes light and hope springs again and it is in the darkness, in the sweat and the blood, that we find hope and the will to go on. Where would we be without that? That offering of once last chance. White, once soiled is lost forever, but black never breaks down.

Goodness can be overpowered, it can be repressed, but it will always be there (or so they say), in the hearts of men there will still be hope, and when chance comes, when that light flickers and it's hold slips, the shadows can return. Light can never truly be cast away and you have to be a fool to believe there can be life without evil, without malcontent and dispute. But beneath it there is purity in the dark. Beneath it there is possibility which is not always seen. Hidden in a realm of false understanding. Where spirits twist and writhe and fall and fight. Where fatality exists within ourselves, but by the faults of others it is unleashed. When the people who never cared enough care too much and the sunlight falters in the heavens. That is when you will find your rightful place. Alone in the dark with the miseries and failings of the world loosely tied to your shoulders.

In the dark things make sense.

It warps your logic, it sheds 'light' because there is no light to distract or cast false shadows.

Never lose faith they told you. But they never told you why. It was just something that was there, you did not talk about the consequences, the repercussions and the effects, it was simply forbidden. Never lose faith and never forget. But it makes no sense to you now. Sitting in the dark and the pain. Never forget. There are memories that shatter your faith in life and death and the beauty of the world like nothing before. To never forget is to lose faith entirely and to keep faith, to cling and scramble and clutch to what is left is to forget. It is to forget why it was leaving you in the first place. It is to forget what it was that made you who you are, what you are….

Never forget and never lose faith.

-

Blackness.

You would have thought it suffocating really, before, when you lived outside in the sun… But it isn't. There is almost a sort of calm to it. Makes sense really… You're supposed to put a blanket over an owl's cage to calm them down. No reason why it shouldn't be the same for humans.

Perhaps it's the way it's constant without monotony? A sort of comforting familiarity without being boring. You always used to like familiarity. Change wasn't good on the whole. It usually ended up with someone dying in protest.

"Where do you think we are?" You ask as it occurs to you.

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?"

He isn't in a good mood. Perhaps talking was a bad idea.

"I- That wasn't what I meant. I mean… What is this place… Well I know it's a cell, or a dungeon or something, but what else has it been used for? There isn't anyone else in here and I'd like to know… its history."

"Its history?" He sounded sceptical. This invitation enough, you continue.

"Yeah. You know, how old it is, if someone else was in this spot before me. If so, for how long? And why?"

"You want to know if we're gonna be the first to die here?"

"No… just… I… I'm not sure. But it would be nice to know what's out there in the dark. Whether there are any corpses lying around or something."

"You know, Granger. If there were corpses, I reckon we'd be able to smell them."

"Well skeletons or something."

"You _want_ to know whether there's a skeleton sitting beside you?"

"No… I just- Well. It could have been used in the last War. Or against Grindewald. And I just thought it would be interesting to know what other prisoners were kept here. Anyone we'd have heard of…"

"Merlin, Granger... Facing a life of eternal torture and you're wanting a History lesson!"

"I was just wondering."

He laughed. It wasn't happy, more grateful. "No need to sound so put out. And there won't be any skeletons, I'm pretty certain of that. If there were they would have some light in here so we could see…"

"What?"

"That's what my father used to do. Keep the old skeletons in their manacles for the new prisoners to see."

"Old skeletons?! Like dug up from graves old skeletons?"

"As far as I know they were never buried…"

"You had _fresh_ skeletons in your cellar?"

"Dungeon, and it was an old house, I'd hardly call them fresh."

"That's got to be a thousand different degrees of wrong Malfoy… Ever heard of 'respect for the dead'?"

"They were a bunch of bones! Gods, Granger. You asked a question and I answered it. I honestly didn't mean to spur you into 'Welfare for the Long-Since Decomposed' mode."

"Sorry. But still, that can hardly be hygienic, can it. I mean bodies rotting in your home! And when you were a child, did they never think of that? What it could do to someone growing up, to randomly stumble in on some maggot infested corpse! You'd have been scarred for life!"

"I'm touched by your concern… But trust me, I've stumbled in on worse. Besides, the dungeons are guarded with just about every ward known to wizard-kind, there wasn't much danger of anyone just wondering in."

"…Roughly how often was it used? You know, before the war?"

He snorted. "Not much. There was the odd occasion when father would come home drunk with–" He faltered. "Never mind. It was very rare. But after fifth year, in the build up, before it really began, he kept a few muggles or the occasional wizard the Dark Lord wanted kept quiet down there… That was when he started teaching me the Unforgivables. But later, well it was HQ for a bit, before they got the Riddle House up and running again. That was uncomfortable… Waking up in the morning, all set on getting a nice shower, to leave the room and find them dragging some clawing POW down the corridor… It's enough to put you right off your breakfast."

He paused.

"He never used silencing charms for torture sessions either… It's one of those things where the imagination can do far worse things than can be inflicted with a wand. Some people he'd just leave down there between two interrogation rooms and let them hear the screams…. They were always hit the hardest. The people you couldn't harm because they were being ransomed, or they had information that couldn't be taken by force… They would listen to the screams and think up so many things that could be happening that they went mad, constantly waiting and dreading for when it would be their turn. Those sort of people would talk in their sleep… Far more effective than physical pain. Psychological torture. There's a knack to it."

"It's times like these I wonder why you're in here with me, rather than outside with them."

"You and me both, little girl."

-

It's like he doesn't care. What you'd give to experience a day in the life of Draco Malfoy. What could possibly make you so immune to such treatment? It's him against the world and that's all that matters. Prejudice is gone and yet he's still that bit better than you… Not morally, not academically, but in life, _real_ life, that is not what counts… You're not sure what does count, but whatever it is, Draco Malfoy has it.

"_Do you know where we are?"_

"_No. It's dark."_

"_Thank you. Without your guiding words I never would have established that."_

"_No need to bitch. You're just jealous my patch of wall is better than yours."_

"_And you worked that out how?"_

"_Well, I'm obviously in a better mood than you, so I must be more comfortable, therefore my space is much better."_

"_Or you could just be slightly more accustomed to swinging in dungeons with frequent overdoses of pain."_

"_You've got room to swing? No fair."_

"_How can you sound so unaffected!? We're stuck here forever! They're not ever going to let us die!"_

"_I thought you were supposed to be the optimist, little-miss-sunshine. You're the type that sits at the end of the world and looks for the bright side of the blackened sun. At least make the effort, you just went and warped my entire perception of you and that's not very friendly."_

"_Jesus, Malfoy, you sound drunk."_

"_I could sound worse."_

-

"He's destroying an entire race out there… An entire species… The good guys are all dead. It's like Hitler won the war and all I can do is sit here and know, but never see, that the world is ending. My world is ending." You are crying now, but that doesn't matter. The tears are like the blood. It just doesn't make any difference, there's still so much left to fall.

He doesn't speak. What could he say anyway? You don't think like him and you never did. He never fought for morality or the greater good. He was like one of those kings in the old Myths, money, power, drinks and women… but then he tried to outsmart his god, he tried to make a war between Good and Evil his own…. and now he takes his punishment.

What did he really think? Back then when he killed so many of your kind, your friends?

Did he believe he was doing the world a favour and ridding it of the filthy vermin his father was so certain you were? But then you remember who this is. It's Draco Malfoy: the Dragon of Bad Faith. You can't see him doing anything for the good of the world.

His exasperation cuts through your thoughts. "What do you want me to do, Granger? Comfort you?"

Your eyes are wet, cheeks blotchy. The damn unfeeling bastard. "Well you could give it a try!"

"But I don't get what you're so cut up about!"

"You don't get– Argh! Have you lost all sense of humanity? All I can feel is pain. Over and over again. It reaches a new level of agony every time they step back into this room and I know that it is never going to end. This is the ultimate worst it is possible to feel… How can you not understand?"

"Well… that is one way of looking at it. But at least it lets us know we're living, right?"

You were silent. He had clearly lost his mind. Served him right anyway.

"Think about it. We could sit here for eternity and never know whether we had died and just not noticed. We can't move, can't see. Without those momentary lapses of pain we can't even feel. What is there in an existence like that? You have nothing to prove to anyone living like that."

You stared incredulous into the dark. "What is there in that? What is there in _this _existence? We have nothing real! All I have is you, and for all I know even that could be some mindfuck of my own psych. A little voice to keep me going in the dark. Survival mentality and all that. For all I know you could be entirely a creation of my desperation, so I don't feel alone. Hell, you could be _me_. What if I developed schizophrenia and never noticed? What if I can never tell? I could die not knowing! What if the one thing that stops me losing my mind is in fact a product of my insanity?"

"As ironic as that is my dear, I do believe you just proved my point. Take away the pain and the only other focus here is the little voice that speaks without a face. Pain you cannot question, me you can. Therefore pain is good. Ha. I win."

How was it that when she had no idea what his face looked like now, she could still see his smirk twisted into his words?

"You do not. All that proves is you're some sadomasochist and I'm the only speck of reasoned thought in this… this… black piece of unnamed space."

"And now you're referring to yourself as a thought? How reasoned is that?"

"Don't twist my words."

"I didn't need to."

"Hmph."

For a small while, or perhaps longer, you were silent.

"I have a question."

"Don't you always?"

Frowning you continued. "What is it exactly you think we have to prove in being tortured?"

He was clearly losing patience. "Look, if you don't want to understand it isn't my fault! The way I see it, if we are forced into living, there can either be something to fight against or we can be left in the dark with nothing but the possibilities of your mind giving you someone to talk to. I always thought you were the one who liked facts and truths? You said it yourself that nothing else here is real."

"Facts and truths, not _crucio_ after _crucio_ while they're off inventing more painful ways to treat us."

"The more you endure the stronger you become. Extensive pain can destroy weakness."

"Spoken like a true Malfoy." Your voice was scathing.

"There is some truth in it! Look it up in a book if you must! Okay, sorry that was low, but you do build up magical resistance."

"To what end?! It's not like we'll ever get to leave here! How is that any form of comfort? Oh, if I sit here and soak up a lifetime of mind numbing agony I will die a strong little prisoner, strapped in manacles but without fear. You really know how to make a person feel good."

"I wasn't trying to flatter you."

-

**AN: **Dude, this sucks.

_**If you've read it please review it!**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR**.

* * *

There has always been something strange about a lack of light. It opens people up. It lets people spill out their souls without remorse or reserve. 

You remember back to before the beginning, back to the life you had when everything you held so dear to you in the past was but a fairytale. You remember back to when there was no magic, no good and evil, no war or never ending shades of grey with an enemy obscured. You remember days of innocence and a monotony you never treasured enough, days where your security almost suffocated you and you dreamed of an escape. You remember days before the letter that changed your world…

You remember sitting in the dark, much like you do now (minus the manacles and the blood) and talking as you do to him (minus the bitterness and the desperation and hate). You remember curling up and whispering with a hushed voice into the darkness in response to your friend's questions.

It had been her tenth birthday… Her mother must have been quite strict, because it was the first sleep-over/slumber party you had ever had at her house… You can't remember her name or her face anymore. You don't know how you met or where she lived… but you do remember her voice. Hushed so not to draw attention to your conversation (you were meant to be asleep), soft in the absence of sleep but ever bright even in the dark. It was the kind of voice you could literally hear the smile in, the memory warms you.

That night you had told her your secrets and she had told you hers. They were small, what boys she liked, how embarrassing that time was when something happened… You can't remember what the something was but you do remember her gasp of scandal and your giggles. You remember how you told her things you'd promised yourself you'd keep to the grave, you remember how easy it was… Simply because you could hear her voice but not see her face. You couldn't see the expectation before the answer or the horror, amazement or pity after. It had been dark, and to you two girls it was as if you could say anything and if it came out wrong it could be as though it never happened, you'd dreamt it in the night… You couldn't see her face so surely if you willed it enough she wouldn't hear what you just said, or it would be forgotten in the morning.

Promises made then were the best kind. She could tell no one your secrets and vice versa because it may not have happened in the first place, what if you dreamt she said that and it wasn't true at all. You couldn't tell anyone.

Whatever your reasoning at the time, you always found it easier to talk in the dark, It's like talking to yourself and having someone reply without the embarrassment of the person seeing you talking to yourself… Kind of.

Well. If your logic was garbled it was with good reason.

He wasn't talking.

He hadn't been talking for more than two torture sessions.

And it wasn't just a he's-been-knocked-out-and-will-be-back-in-a-couple-of-hours kind of a silence or a he's-asleep-so-don't-make-too-much-noise-or-he'll-wake-and-he-needs-all-the-sleep-he-can-get kind of silence, it was a he's-not-talking-to-you-Bitch kind of silence. It was a silence that made you want to die even more, because without him there truly was no point in living. It was the kind of silence that made your teeth ache with shame. You really had gone too far.

And now he might die and you could never know because he wasn't talking to you and you'd keep talking to him and he wouldn't answer and you'd think it was because you were a bitch and actually it was because he was dead but you wouldn't know that and you'd keep on talking and it would be horrible because you'd die alone without even knowing it and you'd hate him for letting you die alone when in fact it was you that let _him_ die alone because you were a bitch and made him not want to talk to you.

You really hated yourself sometimes. (Most of the time.) (All of the time that your efforts weren't devoted to hating him – the bastard.)

Stupid really. Waste of energy. There were enough people out there to hate you and him to the moon and back and yet you still both felt the need to hate each other on top of it. Waste of effort, waste of breath. You were both already damned, why damn each other more when you were the only people left to listen to each other's moaning? Masochism he calls it. Waste of life.

* * *

_"Well, it's true. To bleed is to know that you're alive."_

_"Well maybe I don't want to be alive."_

_"You think I do? At least there is something to focus on. Even if it hurts it is real. Who knows, give it a few more years and you might develop a thing for it… assisted masochism or something, could even be fun."_

_"You are one twisted fuck."_

_"Oooo. Harsh words. You know I'm right."_

_"Don't you smirk at me Draco Malfoy, I would kick you if my feet weren't strapped to the wall."_

_"I'm touched, truly."_

* * *

Perhaps you should apologise? You had no right. You never had the right. You never will have. You don't blame him for hating you. You hate yourself. But that never stopped you talking to yourself… Why can't he just say something? It hurts to be alone. It hurts until you can't feel your thoughts anymore… It's not like their pain. _Sharp. Violent. Quick_. This is pain only he can conjure. _Soft (too soft). Aching (never ending). Personal._ This time you really messed up. 

How do you apologise for something like that? You can't expect him to understand why you said it. You have no right to expect that of him. You don't understand yourself so how can you explain it to him. You were bitter? Resentful? Because you always are… and you've never gone that far before. You wouldn't forgive you. How can you expect it of him?

You miss him. It hurts.

Maybe you should compose a poem or something? Sing to him; serenade him with your heartfelt apology. It would make him laugh if nothing else. You like it when he laughs. When he laughs you can close your eyes and see Grimmauld Place with that wooden table between you and Tonks shaking her head while she leaves you to his dark, sarcastic taunts.

You hated him then.

You hate him now.

But you miss him and you want him back.

"Malfoy?"

There is no answer and you want to cry. You want to scream and pound you fists into his chest and break down and hold him. But you can't. And you won't. So you bite your lip and taste the blood and try again.

"Draco?"

Silence and you hope and pray and dream that he is still asleep. That he isn't ignoring you and hating you and resenting you even more than before… Because it had been a mistake. A slip up. Old habit. Bad habit. It shouldn't have happened.

"Draco. I'm Sorry." Your voice cracks and you feel so weak and so alone that it hurts and you ache.

"I'm so, so, so sorry."

He doesn't respond and you break down and retreat into memories. Because that is all you have left without him. Memories and dreams. Childhood dreams that long since shattered.

But sometimes you like to pick up the pieces and look at the fractured jigsaw of innocent hopes. Sometimes it helps you forget. Sometimes it feels nice and comforting in an empty sort of way.

Sometimes it just makes you miss him more.

* * *

Bright skies and loud music. 

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I bid you welcome to the one, the only…. Grimmauld Place House Of Horrors!"

Halloween afternoon.

Eleven months had passed since Draco Malfoy changed sides.

She wasn't sure how it happened but by the suggestion of Malfoy the three boys had employed Fred, George, Tonks and Ginny to create a huge scale Halloween party for the members of the Order. Complete with costumes. White costumes with pretty white flowers and dresses that scream misused innocence. She really hated him sometimes.

Since the beginning of War the Order had been taking more and more orphans under their wing and one morning the week before, Draco Malfoy (ex-Death Eater extraordinaire) (not to be trusted) stood up at breakfast and announced to her, Ron, Harry, Mrs Weasley and Ginny that they were going to throw them a party on All Hallows' Eve.

"A party?" She had said; practically radiating scepticism in a way only she could manage.

"Yes, Granger. A party. You may not be personally acquainted with the concept, but some of us do know how to have fun."

"Uh huh. It's a nice idea but... don't you think it could possibly be considered slightly insensitive to throw a party on the anniversary of their parents death?"

"No. We throw them a party to take their minds off it."

"I'm not sure if that's the best idea… They could take it the wrong way."

"How many ways is it possible to take a party, Granger? Just a bit of harmless Halloween fun, no references to last year or white lilies hanging from the doorways. It'll give them something to focus on… You know, a bit of distraction."

"Maybe it's not healthy to avoid the issue like that. Maybe some of them would rather mourn than prance around in fancy dress?"

"Just cause you're a killjoy doesn't mean the rest of us have to be! Do you honestly want to sit around a house of depressed kids pining for their parents?"

"No! But– Gods, Malfoy!" She glared. "You are so damn insensitive! You can't just give them a bit of music and cake and hope all their problems will wash away! Not everyone is as bloody unfeeling as you! Their parents _died!_ They deserve to mourn in peace! Not be hounded by you! Of all people you being one of the ones who made them orphans in the first place."

She was suddenly very aware of everyone's eyes on her. Malfoy's eyes narrowed, face paling. She had taken it slightly too far.

There was a heavy silence and then:

"Hermione, sit down."

Expelling a shaky breath she allowed Harry's hand to guide her to her seat. She hadn't noticed standing up.

"Well…" He started hesitantly. "I think it was a good idea. There's little point in us all moping around waiting for the day to end. If they can't be in Hogwarts for the feast then we can at least give them something to enjoy." He paused and looked around. "They're just kids. They have the right to have a bit of fun. Not everyone should have to grow up as fast as we did."

"I– I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry, Malfoy." He just looked at her before inclining his head so slightly it was barely noticeable. Apology accepted. "So…" she started again, needing more than wanting to make it up. "What sort of party do you have in mind?"

He smiled the sort of smile only he could, the kind that announced some deep dark plan with an undertone of utter mischief. "Molly?" Mrs Weasley eyed him with suspicion, they never had seen eye to eye. "Would you mind terribly if I invited your sons over for dinner?"

And that was it. An owl to Tonks and a visit to Diagon Alley later and the twins, the two heroes, the little sister, the auror and her Death Eater cousin locked themselves up in the attic of the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix with several plates of Mrs Weasley's sandwiches, and didn't come down for three solid days.

She had been sitting in the kitchen, reading up on some of the Dark Spells Malfoy had been trying to teach Harry, when they burst in, Luna and Neville in tow, looking distinctly pleased with themselves. That in itself was enough to set the alarm bells ringing but George Weasley handing her a brown paper package had her very nearly hitting paranoia.

Malfoy slapped her on the back and sent her shell-shocked form off the get changed and here she was. Dressed as a sacrificial virgin (Malfoy's idea, Ron had confessed at wand point) complete with long white dress and small white flowers in her hair, she returned to see the house transformed to it's medieval torture chamber glory, thumbscrews and everything. It was impressive.

The ivory dagger strapped to her hip started looking particularly attractive when Malfoy (slimy vampire, all slick black dyed hair and musical voice – bastard) had smirked his treacherous Malfoy smirk at her, ushering the wide-eyed schoolchildren into the garden.

But he had been right. And it had been fun. And for the first time since the Department of Mysteries, the official start of the War, four years previously she relaxed one hundred percent, sipping her green dyed drink with a smile, watching Harry, Ron, Fred, George and Malfoy do the cancan to music belting out of a music box charmed to play 'Muggle Popular Classics From The Nineteen-thirties'.

* * *

What you wouldn't give for that now… 

To be able to witness Ron dressing up as a troll, Fred and George a muggle pantomime horse… Harry had been a muggle punk, 70's style with safety pins and leather, it scared the hell out of the younger pureblood kids… And Malfoy for that matter. Luna had been one of the Fae; you remember Neville stuttering whenever she looked at him. You remember agreeing to tango with Malfoy and looking in horror a few weeks later at one particular picture (courtesy of Colin Creevy) where you appeared to be staring into each other's eyes with your leg draped over his hip. You thought you'd never live that down.

As the tears fall silently and unceasingly down your cheeks you long to hug yourself, or anyone really, but your arms are bound and muscles wasted. You want to talk to Ron again; you want to tell him what you never had the guts to then. You want to hug Harry and tell him how proud you were, how proud you'd always been. You want to tell Neville to get over it and ask Luna out, you want to get Tonks to grow her hair again, you want to hug Mrs Weasley and thank her for being there for you when you needed a mother's love more than anything in the world. You want to thank Snape for everything you never managed to thank him for before, because without him you wouldn't even have Malfoy. And you want to thank Malfoy, you _need_ to thank Draco Malfoy for being there even when he didn't want to be, when you didn't want him to be, but all the same doing the right thing and trying. And now, for being the only thing that keeps you living as more than a shell. You want to thank him for keeping the memories alight and for making the silence a little less silent and the cold a little less cold and the pain a little less painful and life a little more bearable. You want to thank him for being him but still doing the right thing and not acting bitter about it.

You open your eyes and this time the darkness is blurred, you turn to face where you always hear him from and gaze into the empty blackness. You look and you look until your eyes water on top of your tears and then you think you see it. Silver-grey eyes, apologetic, beautiful, pale. Pale like the skin, the hair. Pale like his entire being as he looked at you those last ever moments in the sun. It sounds cheesy and cliché but in your mind he almost has a halo of light around him and as you cry you plead with all your soul that he will reply. That he will listen and talk back.

"I'm sorry, Draco. I'm so, so sorry."

Your voice cracks and plead and pray and hope.

"I know. And don't call me Draco. It's bloody intimidating."

Through your tears you laugh and choke and snort a bit and then he starts laughing too and you feel for a moment like everything will be alright. Even as you bleed and cry and hang broken from a wall, he laughs and you laugh and it almost feels good.

It almost feels as if everything will be okay.

* * *

**Review?**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR.**

**AN: **I'm updating again. So soon? Yes.Act proud.

* * *

It was different back then. Every moment you could blink and see no more, every breath could be your last… every morning you feared the sun wouldn't rise and every night you dreamed of never dreaming again. 

At the time it hurt. It hurt so much and you would have given anything to end it… Everything and anything just to make the pain and the fear go away… But that was then.

Then you still had something to fight for. Then your family were living, your friends fighting and your enemies running and dieing. Then life hurt but it had a purpose. And it was a good purpose. It kept you going. Then he was nothing more than an irritating footnote in the chronicles of your life.

But that was then.

And this is now.

Now you have a world of anger and hate to fight for but no means to do so. Now you have lost everything. Now life hurts and it is never ending. They wont ever let you die. Now he is everything. Your life is dark and he is your world.

You hate him, but he keeps you going.

* * *

"_Loss and possession, death and life are one. There falls no shadow where there shines no sun_." 

It was almost a song you thought as you whispered it into the dark. The words so suited to the situation in an ugly kind of optimism.

"That's very pretty." A dry voice spoke from the abyss. "Where did you hear it?"

"I dunno. Somewhere beyond the grave most likely."

"Uh huh. Was it a muggle saying?"

"At one point. Seems more like a bright expression of reality at the moment."

"Depressing isn't it?"

"Hell yeah."

"So, sing much?"

"I'm not singing to you Malfoy."

"Oww. Not even for a little bit?" He snickered.

"Why don't you?"

"Because my singing voice is far to heavenly to grace this hellhole. The dust mites could get confused, and we wouldn't want that."

"Indeed."

"I see your point though."

"What point?" (There was a point?)

"You know, no shadows where there shines no sun. There aren't any. Everything is constant. Could even be considered a good thing if you squint and tilt your head a bit."

"I'm not tilting my head anywhere. My neck's still cramping from… whenever it was they last came here."

"Yeah… we really need to work out a way of measuring time. Starting to get irritating."

"'Tis a bit."

"Yeah."

"So. And death and life are one. Is that a good thing too?"

"Well… Not necessarily a good thing… but it seems to hold some truth. In all honesty we could die and never notice."

"I'm not sure. Death would surely stop the pain and I know for sure that is something I would notice."

"That would be providing you don't believe in the afterlife. Every faith in the world claims that bad people are punished in the next world. For all we know we could have died the moment they locked the door and this is in fact our own personal hell."

"Eternal torment… we deserve it don't we?"

"Yeah. Well, I certainly do."

"Ha. Know the feeling..."You shake your head. "Listen to us. What would Ron say? Right pair of losers we are, sitting here questioning our existence like we were talking about the weather…"

"Well, it's not like there's much weather to speak of down here is it?"

"True…"

"But we are still alive you know."

"How'd you figure that out?"

"Well, you're here." As if that explained everything.

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"Well, if there were such a thing as immortality in death and our time had already passed, you sure as hell wouldn't be here. You'd be up there with all the other good guys, singing and dancing with all the other martyrs and heroes."

"You think very highly of me Mr Malfoy. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or sick."

"Charmed, I'm sure."

"What makes you think I'm any better than you were? I killed too. Far too many people… I lived for selfish reasons, I fought for selfish reasons, and I'm sitting here, ignoring the fact that if I went you'd have to endure this on your own, and praying to whatever's out there to hear me that I just want to die, all for selfish reasons. "

"And I suppose there were selfish reasons in all the people you saved, set free and healed?"

"Yes! If I hadn't done that I would have been entirely consumed by guilt and wouldn't have survived the war whatever happened."

"See! Guilt. Proof you are a good person."

"What? That proves nothing, any human being capable of feeling knows guilt. It doesn't determine whether you're good or bad, just proves your conscience is in working order."

"I've never felt guilty. Am I not human?"

"Well, that's debatable." You almost smile. "But you have felt guilt, just never identified it as such. I blame your upbringing personally. They drilled it into your head that guilt was a weakness, so in your mind it was just switched to self-loathing, something that can be blocked out far easier than guilt because it seems irrational."

"As beautiful as the psychology lesson was, I can't say I'm convinced. You're saying that my little lapses into depression were in fact an interpretation of my guilty conscience and a product of my childhood household rules, as opposed to the fact that I had made myself a traitor to my own name and the people I was sweating blood to help didn't (and never would) fully trust me?"

"That's not what I'm saying."

"Oh really?"

* * *

When all right is wrong and wrong is right and light is gone and dark is true… 

Perhaps that is why they do it? Keep you here in the dark. It emphasises your hopelessness to the extreme… No light, only dark.

Is that not the world now? Is that not the world they created when they destroyed your army and your friends and your entire life? The existence you once lived is eternally mocked by the darkness you know exists not only here but outside your four walls as well. The remainder of the Army of Light hang suffocated in darkness. Is that not fitting?

All is changed in this utter despair of blackness. Up is down and down is up and you can no longer tell because the sun is gone and here there are not even stars to guide you. Only him. The dragon, named for an ancient constellation he is all that is left of your light. Your guiding star in the darkness of this eternal night.

* * *

"I faced the wall and I cried. I cried solidly for hours and it was as though- as though a hood was pulled over my eyes. Blinkered. I felt so blinkered. And lost. Blinkered and lost. It was like… it was like watching the world ending and feeling it. Feeling it in your very heart… that it had been your fault… that I was at fault for simply standing there and watching when so much was going wrong. I was at fault for surviving and I've never stopped hating myself for that." You laugh and you sob, so close to choking on your words. But it feels good to get it out. Out in the open. "It sounds so melodramatic, but I never thought I'd ever stop hating myself for that. Or hating them. Hating them for making it happen. For making me feel that way. It… it just wasn't fair. They had no right. They had _no_ right…" 

You had stood there and watched. Watched the city lights flicker and die. You had stood and cried and watched, helpless and alone. Alone because your team were dead, helpless because on the inside you were too. It felt like the world was ending, starting with those you worked with, spreading to those you loved. Like a cancer or a virus or some flesh eating fungus that just grows and grows and never dies… it spread and it spread until it was only you. Only you and him. And it wasn't even deliberate.

And that's what you think hurts the most. In the end, when everything else has been dissected until it really doesn't matter any more, that's what hurts the most. Because it truly is unfair. Beyond unfair. Because there was nothing you could do. Ever. Because it wasn't meant to be… it wasn't fated or planned out… it was just _there_. It just happened and it is so unfair, because there was never anything you could have done. It could have been anyone but it was you. And in a way that makes you proud or grateful or something… because it is you, you that survived, and not another you love…

And you try and try and keep on trying and sometimes you even believe that yourself. That you are grateful it is you suffering no another innocent.

But you don't _really_.

You don't believe. You wish you were like that. You long to be the person they thought you to be. Loving to the point of self-sacrifice. But in the end – in _this_ end – you know and he knows that you are not that person. You never were and you never will be. It is not something human nature possesses. We are not bred to love unconditionally and try as you might you cannot be glad in any way of your fate. Try as you might, and as you do, you cannot be happy that it is you here instead of Ron or Ginny or Harry. It makes you feel sick and dirty and utterly, utterly wrong, but not a day goes by that you wish it hadn't been you. Not a day goes by and for that you hate yourself.

"You don't understand… And I don't expect you to either. I _shouldn't_ expect you to. It isn't fair really. We're _bad_ people. _They're _bad people. They're worse than us and we keep telling ourselves it. We keep saying that they're worse and we were right, even though we did bad things it was for good cause. And for us it worked… it kept us going and kept us fighting and killing and winning for so long… But in all that time, all that time it never occurred that they were doing that exact same thing, and it just doesn't make sense, because it's so obvious now. Why did I think they were fighting? Why did I think _you_ and them were fighting? Schoolchildren. Schoolchildren don't fight because it's evil and it feels good to be evil. You were old enough to think for yourselves, you didn't march into battles just for the hell of it. You were fighting for a cause. Just like we were. You were fighting and we were fighting and in the end we were all fighting for the same thing, only it was expressed slightly differently. We were both fighting for what we believed was good and right and just. We were both fighting for vengeance and for prevention and we both thought each other evil for _the exact same reasons_. We were all human and all we ever wanted was a world where things made sense and there were no bad guys.

"All we ever wanted to do was kill the bad guys…"

He just sits there and there is silence. And really you think he _does_ understand. Even though you don't expect him to and you shouldn't expect him to, you think he does. Because he was there. And he fought. And just like you he lost and pays for it. Just like you he thinks and cringes at his former blindness. That's what it does, you know, the darkness and the pain. It gifts you hindsight. They have given you all the time in the world to sit back and pick your faults and their faults and the general faults of humanity until you lose your minds. Lose your minds with the insanity of it all. Because it all makes sense. The madness makes sense and you feel so inadequate for not seeing it before. Before, when it could have made a difference.

They cage you and gift you with hindsight and with it you slowly drive yourself mad. Clinging to him as though he was your innocence reborn, when in reality he is just as screwed as you. And will continue to be. Because that is why you are here. Both of you, together, because you were both wrong and you both misjudged. You both thought that life was a good thing. Death was bad and death was evil and death was their weapon of choice.

It wasn't.

It wasn't evil. (It has become your sweetest dream – your fairytale ending in death).

It wasn't bad. (It could have saved you – it would have saved you were it not for him and you and damn stubborn, clingy life).

It was never their weapon of choice. (_This_ is ultimate destruction – when you allow the prisoner to do it themselves. Pick holes in their own psych until all crumbles and dies.) (_"Psychological torture."_ He said. _"There's a knack to it")_

You know what they're trying to do. What they're _doing_. You know and you know it works, and you can feel it working. You try and try to fight it off (because you know the plan and that should make it easy) but it just doesn't work. Because it is human nature. You know it and they know it and even he knows it… and they exploit it and you are helpless in the face of it, because even though you know, you are powerless because it applies to you, and it will always apply to you.

Human Nature: To argue with whoever opposes. Whoever is different, unknown, 'wrong'. To pick and pick and pick until the wound opens and bleeds and then keep on picking until you drown in the blood. Because you don't know when to stop. Or you do but you still can't make it happen. It's destruction. Ingrained in our genetic make up. Destruction of nature, destruction of others, destruction of self.

It will always apply to you.

* * *

Sometimes you dream (the kind of dreams that make you laugh on waking) of breaking out. You dream of having your powers back, finding strength from the very despair that makes their pain superfluous. You dream of knocking out the torturers and the guards and all the bad people until you can take the keys and go to him. In your dream you go to him and you hug him and unlock his chains and hold him. And he holds you back. And all is right and good, and even if you died in that one moment it would be all right, because it would be you and him and the bad guys would be gone. The chains would be gone. Last of the Army of Light, dying in each other's arms. It has a ring to it. A good ring. The ring makes you happy. 

But then you wake and you remember and you laugh because it stops you crying (you cry too much). You laugh because to you it sounds so fairytale. It sounds so perfect and beyond romantic. It sounds like heavenly perfection with soul mates and divine, all-conquering love and goodness. It sounds so beautiful when in fact it is two broken souls, two broken people, two broken lumps of flesh, clinging to each other because there is no one else left to cling to. It is two broken enemies clutching each other because they no longer have the will to cling to life. It is desperation in a windowless cell. Dust and dirt and sweat and blood and it is your picture of beauty, because all other beauty is too far gone to contemplate. It is Draco Malfoy and you hate him and yet if you died in his arms you would die happy.

It is a different story. It is a new brand of superheroics, a new style of dreaming. It is a new fairytale and it doesn't (can't) (won't) (does) make sense.

* * *

**AN: **Tehe. That wasn't very happy.It was also written at about 1am last night, so try to ignore all the stupid mistakes etc. I have a tendency to ramble and get caught up in streams of thought when i'm tired... miffle. English Lit exam on Wednesday and i dont want to work :( Wish me luck lovely nice people who blatantly want to **review. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR.**

* * *

Pores bubbling with scalding oil. Muscles spasm and nerves shudder. You want out. You want it so bad you scream it and they laugh. Amused and surprised. They don't know you. Or why you're here. They've never even seen your face and yet they can conjure up enough hate to fuel the spell. They do not hate you. They don't know you. They hate your blood and what your life represents. (What it did represent before they came and took it all and gave you him who you hate and love because that is all you are capable of anymore.)

Brainwashing and prejudice are their weapons of choice now. No longer do they need _Imperio_ or blackmail to spread their word. They are the Government now. They hold the power they coveted for so long and they use it in ways that can inspire hate for a prisoner whose face you've never seen.

Did they tell them of all the people you killed in your desperate attempts for hope? Did they show the pictures of the lifeless corpses you left behind, corpses of friends and family members, their own relatives that you struck down because it was the only way to keep on surviving? Is that what makes them hate with such power they can burn you from the inside out with curses so saturated in evil you cannot speak the incantations without pain.

You wonder what they talk of in History of Magic nowadays, back at Hogwarts (if Hogwarts still stands that is…). You always used to think it would be a forever thing. Harry Potter, saviour of the world. It was one of those set things, him living forever through the legacy of the first defeat, alongside the names of Albus Dumbledore and Merlin as the great wizards of the ages… But now he must be seen as… well, something akin to how Voldemort was talked of when you were at school. Do they fear to speak his name for fear that it may somehow resurrect his spirit? Is Malfoy seen as something like Peter Pettigrew? Are you the new Bellatrix Lestrange?

They say history repeats itself and in some ways it feels as though it has… Only in reverse. Though this time, you think, Harry wont be coming back from the grave, nor will you return to your rightful place beside him…

Even if they unlocked the chains you don't think you would manage to move. It's been that long. So long the muscles are wasted beyond repair. It's a miracle you're still alive, you think sometimes. But no. Not a miracle. It is simply magic. Spells and potions woven into your blood to keep you living, nutrients injected into your body with water by magic so there is no hope of starving yourselves to death. They want you alive for no reason other than to let you suffer.

You open your eyes (a habit still. There is never anything to see, even their spells are blacked out…) to the sound of them leaving. You noted this with no small amount of pride; it was something he had been trying to teach you for a while now, shutting your mind off to the pain. Sometimes you would not need it, sometimes it just hurt so much it ceased to hurt at all, but others, like today, you needed ever ounce of mind power to block it out. He told you focus on something, but not too hard, ('don't force it', he said). Focus on something so the thoughts simply flow and you become absorbed. He said it should be like reading and it was. You smile, like a first year completing her first spell – accomplishment – it is a feeling you thought you had left long behind, but apparently not. And that feels good.

* * *

Another day (month/year?) another blinding bout of pain. They have so much hate. You note it with disgust and appal, but also a form of wonder. You never managed that kind of emotion, raw enough to drive spells of this strength. Again you wonder over the power He must have over the human mind, to enable these people, barely eighteen, to hate with such passionate ferocity it could hurt that much… It is impressive. (Disgusting, but impressive.)

It makes you think sometimes, was that what made them win? The raw emotion that fuelled power far greater than anything you got on determination and strength alone. It is strange really, the possibility that they won on the weight of an emotion. What is the most prominent value of the pureblood way of life? Strength. And what is emotion? Weakness – the greatest weakness.

Not for the first time you ponder and hate the thought of Good being the weaker of the two. That is not how it should ever be, they were not even supposed to be equal… Was that what lost it for you? That certainty that you were going to win? That firm belief that even if they grew in numbers and strength, you would still triumph simply because what? You had God on your side? It has been forever since you believed in God.

* * *

"_Well… We've got nothing to fear in death." _

"_Is that a good thing?" _

"_I'm not sure." _

"_You believe in God?" _

"_No. You?" _

"_Did… but that was a long time ago. Times change. I believe in Satan. Does that count?" _

"_I don't think so." _

"_Oh. Still, it's funny really…" _

"_What is?"_

"_People say that suffering should either make your link with Him stronger or destroy it; all it did for me was leave me hating the devil…. Until, one day I just woke up and… well, he just wasn't there." _

"_Not much of a Job then?"_

_She laughed. It sounded hollow. "No. Would make my father proud, he never was much of a believer." _

"_Wouldn't have taken you to be one either though… Know-it-all bookworms do tend to be rather atheist with all their demands for proof and reasoning." _

"_I was never like that before. Before Hogwarts they called me a dreamer. My head always in the clouds. I read too many books… I was always a hard worker, but stories interested me far more than science… Magic and castles and fairies… That was what I lived for. _

"_But when I got my letter, all those dreams came true… For you those textbooks were work, but to me they were the fantasy stories I loved as a child. I wanted to know it all. I wanted to see how it worked, and how I had escaped thinking it wasn't real for so long. I don't think it was until the war really began that it really sunk in that I wasn't living a dream… the good guys never died in fairytales."_

"_Hmmm. Hermione Granger the Dreamer. I'm not sure, doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?" _

_She laughed again.

* * *

_

Did we never hate enough? You ask yourself as they leave. If you had tried just that little bit harder, hated a little bit more, fought that little bit dirtier? Would that have won it for you? Were you really just too kind hearted to conquer? But then you remember him. Your companion. Draco Malfoy. Your soul mate because you have no one left.

He fought the dirtiest of them all. A traitor. He used the weapons they had given him and turned them back on the ones who raised him. He killed childhood friends, cousins… He stood and watched as his father was executed and it was as though it kept him fighting. The pure adrenaline of being so wrong. So utterly, utterly bad. He became the enemy of everything he stood for and it made him powerful. But it also made him arrogant and perhaps through that it made him lose…

No. Fighting dirty was not what was needed to win. And nor was hate, because you have more of it now than ever and it gives you no strength. (Self destructive. That is what you would be if they allowed it. B_ut they won't ever let you die.)_

The thing you have really grown to hate. More than the pain and the helplessness and the dependency on the bastard that got you here in the first place. The thing that pains you the most is their indifference.

You remember before. When you were a prisoner of war (it only happened once, back when Harry was there to get you out). They had tortured you on the hour every hour (there was a grandfather clock just outside your holding cell) and they did it with such relish. As though every splinter of pain that wormed its way out of your heart (because that is where it feels it is coming from – within you – mind numbing and personal), as though every last scream meant the world to them. At the time it made you sick – it made you want to look down on their bloodied corpses and smile, dancing on their graves – but now… now the thought of that gives you a twisted sense of nostalgia. Back then you meant something. The people holding you (torturing, beating, hurting you) felt something in your pain. Now they feel nothing.

It has been so long that many of them no longer remember why you are here. (How old are you now? You can't remember and neither can he. You have felt so old for so long now. Spent. You feel spent.) They beat you because they are told to. Because it is good practice. There is no malice in it. No feeling or accomplishment in their taunts. Their hearts are not in it as their tear you apart, and that makes you feel so worthless. Because if they don't care (even to hate) then who is there left?

All point in living evaporated long ago and now you mean so little the people who torture you cant even be bothered to hate you. Not truly. Not personally. You mean that little. They hate your reputation and your blood, but not you. What makes you you is not considered as they bleed you dry only to replenish the blood. They wont ever let you die.

They are having the beginners play with you now, he says. He can tell because he was one once. You never learnt the Dark Arts and he confides to you that he misses it. He misses the sense of power you can only experience in the pain of another. ("Not blood pain. Not pain if flesh or mind. It's pain of the soul. That is what it feels to wield true power. The power of gods. You can make them hurt to the very core of what is _them_. Not physical or mental. It's spiritual pain and I know it's wrong but it felt so good.") (It is almost ironic that the thing he misses so much is the very thing you experience day by day.)

He says that the way their voice shakes and the spell shudders to a halt with a whimper that could be yours or theirs, he says that tells you they are not sure whether they like what their doing. He says that shudder is their conscience. He says that after a few months that shudder fades to nothing. He says that it's human nature to adapt. You don't think you like human nature very much.

* * *

"You know, I used to play the piano."

Stunned silence and then, "What?"

"I used to play the piano."

"You did?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Yeah… I was quite good too."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yeah. Used to like it."

"Cool."

"Yeah."

This happened a lot nowadays. You sometimes think it shows how much the two of you have changed. Before he never volunteered information about himself – he relished the mystery surrounding his character and his decisions – never once, in all your time fighting alongside one another, never once did he talk about his childhood, or in fact anything about his life. It was like the fighting was his job and he kept it utterly separate from his personal life. That was where he differed from you, you realise, to him the fighting was simply a stepping-stone to something greater, but for you fighting was everything. It held your entire existence in the balance and you gave it your all. Again you wonder if you _both_ deserve this punishment, you are both here for entirely different reasons. At times you hate yourself and think with all your soul that it is you who should be here, who deserves to sit here to rot (living – you will rot with your heart beating – that is their goal), and in other cases you hate him and truly, honestly believe that he is the only one who merited such punishment (after all, you did no more than Ron or Ginny, and yet they escaped with death (painful but complete)).

But all the same, you are both here, both chained to the same fate – one you can neither see nor predict (you were so certain they would have him put to death). And you talk (because it is all you have left. The one outlet in your own personal hell). You bitch and he teases you, he shouts and you curse him, he laughs in their faces and you bleed and sob, and then he does the unexpected, a real conversation (the type shared by friends, not mortal enemies chained in a pitch black cave). He'd say something, something utterly random about the past, you'd exchange pointless pleasantries about it and then you'd stop and think. You would sit and think and try and picture what he said, and play it over in your head until you made it real.

Him sitting at a pianoforte, playing in a huge hall, a ballroom perhaps, with swirling couples, waltzing to the music. The room was beautiful. Tall. Ceiling as high as the Great Hall at Hogwarts, only it's arches met as a dome, a great dark violet pool with all the stars of the night sky reflected in it. It is almost as though you remember the sound of the piano keys, ringing out to mingle with the peaceful chattering of guests at whatever event was being held. You almost remember the floor to ceiling windows that looked west, and the deep lavender, mingled with crimson that stained the evening sky. You almost remember walking out, out onto a wide balcony, overlooking mountains and trees and beautiful grounds at a beautiful stately home. You almost remember sitting there, on the brink of night, the brink of darkness, and listening to him.

That's what he does sometimes. He lets you remember things too beautiful to ever witness. He lets you feel things you don't think you ever felt. He lets you live, as you sit in that dark shared cell where your only pastime would be trying to guess the weather from the quality of the air or the consistency of the water that slides down your back with numbing monotony. With his pointless facts about an existence long since passed he gives you something to focus on and smile about. He gives you something to live for…

* * *

"_Don't forget me?"_

"_Ha, its not like I can really, now is it?"_

_The cell was dark, always dark. You had been here only a matter of weeks and it was still only dawning on you that this was it. This was the rest of your life; cold, dark and uncomfortable with only a childhood rival as company. You couldn't even see him. His company was, as always, a painful reminder of what you wished you could forget, but in some ways you found you had formed some form of attachment to his familiar and almost welcome derisive drawl._

"_No…. I mean. Well. They might take you out or something? You know… I don't know… I… well, you were a traitor, right? They, they're going to want to punish you slightly more effectively than just hanging you in the dark to rot, aren't they? I'm not dangerous anymore because I have no powers or anyone to back me up, but you, you being alive is all the power you need. You're an insult to him. You said it yourself, your very existence insults him. And… well. Voldemort doesn't seem like the type to take insult very well." _

"_So, you think they're going to come kill me?" And you blink at the response…because he sounds as though it never occurred to him. The wave of pity that strikes you then is unlike anything you ever experienced related to him. You don't really understand, it's the same as what you felt when you explained to those sobbing first year muggleborns that, yes, they had just entered a world of magic where dreams came true with the wave of a wooden stick, but they had also entered into a nightmare that should never have been possible. It was that same sense of pity you felt when telling those small children that they would have been better off staying with their parents, but if they went back now their whole family would end up dead. It was what you felt when you shattered the innocent illusions of an eleven-year-old, telling them they may have to learn to kill if they wanted to survive the year… _

_He sounded bewildered by the fact that they would want him dead. He sounded so alienly naive that you had to double take and scramble back the words that a moment ago were on the tip of your tongue. _

"_Well, what I mean is… If they take you somewhere else, if this isn't enough punishment because we've got company or something… If we're put in isolation or executed… if this is just temporary… I just don't want you dieing hating me… That's all."_

_There was a momentary pause as he absorbed your words, and then:_

"_I told you." His voice was so quiet you had to strain to hear it. "I told you before, I don't hate you. I haven't done for a long time. I mean, you're as irritating as hell, and sometimes I blame you for everything… just because… well – there isn't really anyone else to blame anymore is there? And sometimes I think it would be so much better if we had just not fought– after the end – when they came for us, if we had just not fought none of this would have happened. And that would have been better. And sometimes I hate you for that. Because that was the only reason why I fought at all. Redemption or something. Because I had nothing left to lose and your life seemed like something better to fight for than my own and well… I 'spose I was just trying to make it up to you. In some twisted roundabout kind of way. And I'm sorry. Because I screwed that up too… Look where it got us." He laughs, the hollow laugh of a dead man. "And I know you hate me. And I probably deserve it because in the end it is my fault. But all the same, I'll ask the same back of you. Just don't die hating me like you do them. And I did try. In the end. I know… in the end when it didn't matter anymore and just made things worse, but I did try." He laughed again. "Guess I'm just not hero material, eh? So yeah… I'm sorry, and I'm not likely to say it again so remember it. Oh – and don't bring this up when we're in the middle of some big shouting match or something… I don't take well to having my own apologies thrown back in my face."_

_And you just stared at him, because you couldn't think of anything else to do. You just stared in the direction of his voice in disbelief. Because he… He understood. He didn't know he did, and if you had your way he wouldn't either… But… He knew what it was you were feeling. What you had been feeling since the moment they shut the door. And he blamed you and he blamed himself and he hated them and what he'd done. And he didn't want to apologise but he felt he needed to because… just because. Because they were both each other's reasons for being here although they blamed themselves… and… and you knew exactly what he meant._

_The pause was almost shuddering in its intensity as you sat too stunned to word an answer and he waited in anticipation of a harsh rejection._

_You blinked, swallowed and responded softly. "I– I'm sorry too. And I hate you and blame you and hate and blame myself, but… But I don't think anyone deserves this. Not you or me or even them. I want to get out but I know if I did I would have nothing…. So it's a losing battle really. A losing battle against myself…_

"_I don't know how long we're going to be together in here… but. Just in case something does happen… I do hate you and I do blame you… but right now it isn't half as much as I hate and blame myself… and if I get the chance, it will be them I die hating. So… yeah. Truce or something, I suppose."

* * *

_

And he had meant it too. The bit about never repeating it. And in a way… it seemed to make it more solid… more real. Because it meant enough to embarrass him, the fact that he was sorry and he had been wrong. And you had meant it too. There really was no point lying to each other, you knew it then and you know it now. But there was something in his voice then, something you would never forget. It was sincere in a way you would never have anticipated from him… but at the same time hopelessly proud, as though he knew he was running himself into the ground but there was no reason why he shouldn't do it with his head held high. You could almost see his chin angled in defiance while he sneered his apology at you, willing you to believe him because there was no way he would lower himself to grovel.

It was a moment you chose to near enough ignore in significance at the beginning, that particular truce of course lasting all of a day, but in essence that one conversation, shared on the brink of the realisation of the true hopelessness of you situation, was what kept the two of you going. You hated and blamed each other, and perhaps you always would… but you were united in a common cause. As such. Because there was no escaping it, even in death and if you could not hate together then what hope did you ever have of agreeing?

* * *

**AN**: Me giveth up. The chapter ends here and I am well aware of how bad it is but nergh. I cant be bothered. So forgive the rambling trains of thoughts (im never any good at cutting them down) and the general pointlessness of the whole thing really. Whether you like it, hate it, or just generally despair for my sanity (or their sanity or the sanity of the human race as a whole) please **Review?**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR.**

* * *

There's a vague sense of displacement in this place. Things just don't seem to fit. Sometimes you will look up and see the emptiness through rusted eyes and it will be like looking to the sky at night… Night as you remember it all those years ago, with its velvet blackness and purity and uncertainty and dark, dark, mystery. You used to like the night. Sitting by a window with a book and a small smile on your face as you read about other people in times long since passed and spells and potions and hope for the end of that war. And you believed in it then. You believed in the night and the books and the petty hopes, because good had always triumphed in the past. 

And it had slipped your mind back then, that good was relative. Never defined as one thing. And even if the Death Eaters triumphed it would be recorded as a victory of good because to them it was. They thought they were saving the human race from extinction, and your books told you of brave armies that fought against evil and terrorists and rebels and you never associated it to your own situation.

And what are you now? A prisoner. A terrorist of old, a freedom fighter who fought for the freedom of evil and corruption and death of magic. Because that's what they see you as, as a muggle born you are disease and pestilence and if they had let you you would have been death too. And they fear you for that. Because you could have killed them and would have and they would never see the light of a world untainted. Because that is what they fight for. Freedom from the virus that is the human race, and you find it ironic, because what they condemn you for are not personal, they are then general faults of humanity, but in their blindness (the same blindness they once shared) they have found a way to place the blame. We humans are good at placing the blame you realise. Wars are born in passing the blame and trying to right what they think is wrong but others see as a way of life.

And they will look at themselves and write about brave rebels who managed to disarm and eventually collapse a corrupt empire. And then they come here and torture you, because they think it is the least they can do, after what you tried to do to all of them, after you tried to have them killed and burned at the stake like the little child-witches in the past. And they will make you suffer because they don't know you and don't see what you can only see when life is dark, and they don't understand what you do now. And they don't know that you were trying to save them too. And you wanted good to triumph and end the suffering and prevent the doom of humanity. They don't understand and you would tell them were you not hoarse from screaming and bleeding when you should no longer have anything left to bleed. And you would tell them and make them understand, but they don't want to listen because you are evil and they fear you and they torture you because it makes them feel safer. And because you are the enemy.

And it hurts. And you cry but don't speak because you can't and even if you could they wouldn't listen. And you bleed but do so in silence. And they leave. And you hate them and resent them and pity them and understand and want them to as well. But they don't and they wont. So you talk to him and try to make him understand when he already did but didn't need to because he never fought for what you did. He fought for himself and no other. And once that would have made him powerful, but they didn't recognise and they thought he fought for you and now he hangs and bleeds and understands and hates too.

And that is how it is.

* * *

He says that people hate because they can. Because it gives them justification (not public justification but personal, the kind that would appease your conscience), justification to do whatever they wish at the expense of others. He says it is the most powerful emotion in that respect, to your protests he claims it is more powerful than love. He says that with hate you can convince yourself to do anything and it will be justified. Within your own head it will be justified and at times that is all you need. When desperation strikes he says that hate is what gets you through. It lends you strength. He says that hate is humanity's greatest weapon. He says it has been this way since the very dawn of life. 

He tells you that there is a story. A story that starts once upon a time with little cave dwelling men who have made themselves little flint spears, sharpened to kill. (Because it's natural, you know. To kill. Since the dawn of time it's been natural.) The little cave men (that is what they're known as… men because they have fire, because they kill each other in anger rather than simply for survival. Men because they have voices, because they can argue to back up their fights. What is it to be a man? To kill on more than an instinct, for more (less?) than survival?) they learn to hate. (_It's human nature to hate_, he had said.) They learn to hate and kill and kill for hate and hate for killings. (Is that when they became men, you wonder, men rather than monkeys? Humans rather than animals.) They decided that they hated things, other people. They decided that they hated things and decided to do something about it. (That's the good thing about humanity, you see, they don't leave things the way they were. It's progress, development, _evolution._ They can so they do.) They do something about it and with their sharpened flint spears they aid development and progress and _evolution._ And hates turn to prejudices which are very similar to hate only not so personal. Prejudice is more like evolved hate, general hate that all can partake in. _Prejudice_ is the little men's new weapon and they are proud of it. They kill with it and for it and they find it good.

And they are dead and hated so truly that their body is strung out among the trees to bleed and be watched over in triumph. But as they watch, the cave men (killers) think. They think and feel and as the blood falls rain from the arches of the forest the evolved killers think they never hated enough. They do not feel the elation they should for the destruction of that renowned enemy, that renowned threat. And so in the glory of their sins they force themselves to hate and to fight and to like it because that is what is meant to happen. That is what they were born for and they will strive to achieve something of the goal they take as their own.

He says they are you. You are the dead, strung among the trees. And to prove their hatred and their loyalty they make you bleed and cry. And their hate justifies it, as it justifies all things. And they wont let you die because it would be a mercy, and mercy is not a concept these killers enjoy.

* * *

"What were you fighting for?" 

Your voice pierces the air and you can almost hear his head snap up… Perhaps he was just as deep in thought as you.

"I don't remember, Granger. I don't think I even knew then, in all honesty I don't think I really cared."

"How can you not care when you came so close to losing you life for it?"

"Don't you think losing your life would have been better than how we are now?"

"That still isn't answering the question."

He's never answered you that. Not once in the several thousand times you've asked. Not back then, when you hated and resented each other, not now when you're all each other have left.

"Well, it's none of your business is it?"

He's said that before.

"It's been my business since the day you waltzed in and decided to start saving lives!"

And that your obligatory response.

"Shut up Granger."

Some things never change.

* * *

"_I don't like him being here!" _

"_And you think we do? It's Malfoy Hermione… no one is going to like it, but we need what he can give us." _

"_What? We've already got Snape… why would we need anyone else?"_

"_That's not what he's offering…"_

"_Well what is?"_

"_He's willing to get us Bellatrix Lestrange." _

_Silence. _

"_What?" Her voice was deadly quiet. _

"_He can hand over Bellatrix. He knows where her safe house is!"_

"_Of course he does! He's a Death Eater! But hand her over? Why the _hell_ would he do that? He'll send you off to the Safe house and you'll be ambushed. This is a trap Harry; you can't go along with it." _

"_Look, Hermione… I know you don't agree with this kind of thing… but she's… Merlin, Hermione, I've been looking for her for years… You know what she's done. If I can have this one chance to get her… I need this."_

"_I know you do… Harry, but. I. This… It isn't safe. You're taking Draco Malfoy's word for it. Why would he give up Voldemort's best to you of all people. She's his Aunt!"_

"_She killed his mother."_

"_What?"_

"_Narcissa Malfoy. Bellatrix tortured her own sister until she died."_

"…_Wha… but." She shook her head. "I don't care what Malfoy's little sob story is, this isn't safe! If he wanted Bellatrix dead he'd do it himself. You know his reputation!"_

"_No." It was Lupin. "She's his own blood and Voldemort's favourite. Extracting his own revenge would cost him his life and I think we've established that Mr Malfoy is adept at keeping himself on top. He wants her dead… but if his name was ever connected to it, it could cost him is reputation. "_

"_So he gives her to Harry?" Her eyes were disbelieving._

"_You've all gone mad. This is _Draco Malfoy_! Do you not remember him? Bigoted little ferret who called me Mudblood and bitched about Ron's family and called your mother a whore? This is the boy who killed Ernie Macmillan. He challenged another boy to a duel of honour while he was at _school! _And then he proceeded to peel him apart with the Dark Arts until he begged for mercy at his feet! Are you completely demented? He. Is. Not. SAFE! And you think he's going to give you something you want… for something as small as that. He wants something more than Bellatrix's death, and until you know precisely what it is I don't think you should even consider opening _letters_ from him." _

"_What is it you think he wants then?"_

"_What he's always wanted, Harry. He wants one over on you."

* * *

_

"How would that help? How would any of that help? What do you want me to do? Tell you that I love you and we are obviously soul mates so it's all right that we suffer here because we're together and that's all that matters? Will that make you feel better, Granger? Will that stop your goddamned moaning?"

Crying. Still crying. It is all you ever do anymore. All you have the energy to do.

"That wasn't what I meant. I don't know what I meant. I just want something to live for, Draco. Please. Just give me something to live for."

Draco. You'd called him Draco. He hates that. He hates you. He should hate you. You don't deserve to be alive and you don't want to be alive and you deserve what you get and you hate it. And you think sometimes that you hate him, but you don't know. Because you need him and it makes you feel so weak but it is all you have left.

"It's human nature to love." You say.

"Human nature is to hate." He replies, voice bitter and strained. "_HATE_! Why can't you see that, Granger? Why can't you see what I am? They can't have broken you. I can't survive if they've broken you. There is nothing in me to love, Granger. You hate me. You have to hate me because you always have and it's what I deserve."

It is. It's what he deserves forever and back because he is a bad person.

"Do _you_ hate _me_?"

"YES!"

He does that sometimes. Shuts you out. _Throws _you out. He doesn't like it when you talk like that. Perhaps one small part of him believes you're going to get out one day… Because he hates it when you talk about the end.

And he does hate you. And it should make you sadder. It should make you cry more. But it doesn't. Because it is normal and it feels so good to have that link to the past. Because he's always hated you. And consistency is good.

* * *

"Just shut the fuck up! It's none of your business! You don't understand and you wont understand and stop saying you do when YOU ARE NOT ME! You can think and mourn and cry all you want Granger, but it wont bring them back and it wont break these chains and it wont make me a better person than I am! And you can try forever because there's no one here to stop you, but you'll get nowhere. We will never get anywhere. So just stop talking and asking questions you don't want the answers to and stop trying to make me something I'm not. Just give it up, Granger!" 

"Why? Why should I give up that tiny slither of hope when I lost everything trying to cling to it? You are not a bad person! You are better than them and–"

"Just shut up! Shut your fucking mouth because I don't want to hear it! Shut the hell up and leave me alone! I hate you. Fuck, Granger, you Mudblood bitch! I hate you _so _much!"

And you do stop. You fall silent and it hurts. Because you know it's true and you hate him too. But somehow you're glad he calls you that. You're glad he screams it with such bitterness and anger and hate. You're glad the venom that courses through that one word is so wholly directed at you, because with his bitter outburst and accusations he reminds you of what you are. Of who you are. Without his anger and his shouting you would question your existence in this world of killers and thieves. You would question your past existence when the world was good and you were pure. You would question the very existence of existence… But somewhere in that word, that harshly spat word, you feel something akin to normality, to belonging. While he curses you, you remember and it feels good.

And you're glad he calls you by your name, for without your name your identity is lost. But he speaks it and you think it so it must be, right? You hope so. You hope so because it is one of the few things that remain truly yours. Your name. Your identity. They can hurt you and beat you and steal your innocence and your dignity but they cannot steal who you are. As long as you remember that you think you might survive. Even if it is only to spite them.

And so you sit in the dark and listen to his ragged breathing and feel your pulse pounding in your temple and just let it be. Because you don't have the energy to fight with the only one who truly understands you (no matter how reluctantly). And it hurts for him just as much as it hurts for you. Just as much and probably more, because he had a choice and made the wrong one. And he had the option and had he taken it he would have been out there, a Lord among the most powerful, respected and rewarded rather than rotting in a windowless cell with only a mudblood for company. A mudblood he hates. It must be worse for him, because he isn't even here for his beliefs. He's here because he messed it up big time and has no chance of redeeming himself.

He was too mercenary perhaps. Maybe this is his punishment for making light of the matters that ruled so many lives. Perhaps he lost it all as a punishment for not believing in _anything_, not Harry, not Voldemort. Not even a god or greater goodness that would give us peace if we tried hard enough. He lost it all. Power and money and prestige. And it wasn't in a change of heart of an epiphany that altered his whole perception of life. It was by chance. He made his decision just too early and pays for it with blood and sanity and hope.

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**Review?**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR.**

**Accomplishments for today:** I fell in a stream trying to rescue my dog's Frisbee, ate a pink mini-milk and wrote half a page about trains to post under the pretence of 'Harry Potter Fanfiction'.I need a life.

* * *

You remember sometimes, the War, the people you once loved more than anything in the world. You remember how Harry would subconsciously flatten his fringe to hide his scar in public, you remember how Ron used to take the chocolate chips out of _anything_ and eat them last. You remember being annoyed at how they refused to take the train to Diagon Alley even when they could no longer easily access a Floo port. It was stupid, you had said, that everyone was so scared of what so many had died to protect, how people would go out of their way not to enter Muggle London for fear of a Death Eater attack. This was precisely what they fought against, such mindless prejudices, foolish notions of safety on home territory.

They had laughed and brushed it off, saying they just found trains uncomfortable. (To this you snorted, since when had trains been less comfortable than Floo?)

You remember the real reasons behind your argument though, and it makes you somewhat sad. Because even when your friends apparated, flooed and flew, you would still sit on a graffiti scrawled carriage, wand hidden beneath a muggle outer-coat, and wait the long way to get into London, even when the city was a shell of what you remembered it to be in your childhood. You still took the train over other faster and far more convenient modes of transport because you knew that avoiding it would gradually detach you from the people you were trying so hard to save. You knew that detachment would leave you on the same level as them, as the Death Eaters and their Lord, and you couldn't afford to lose that one advantage of understanding. You knew then, as you listened to the hum of wheels over rails that detachment could lose you the War. And you so desperately didn't want to lose.

* * *

There was no Final Battle. No burst of glory with golden sacrifices on blood soaked fields. No chink in the clouds to let sunlight bless the winner. There was no beauty and hope, there wasn't even enough time for fear. (Despair possibly, but not fear.)

It had come at night, as you'd always expected it to. Thick dark night which wasn't all that thick or dark because of the muggle streetlights that stood outside the door.

You hadn't woken with a feeling of heavy dread, you hadn't been nursing a cold cup of coffee with knowledge that something had gone wrong. No, you had been asleep, fast asleep and dreaming a rather pleasant dream involving Crookshanks, Malfoy and sharp feline claws. You'd been shaken awake with a distracted smile on your face as Ginny yelled something over her shoulder.

"Hermione, you've got to get up." She'd said, laughing at a comment from Fred or George (you weren't awake enough to identify which).

"Why?" Groggy and sleepy you itched your nose.

"I dunno, we just got a Floo message from Tonks, sounded distressed, but it's in code so we need you to translate it, sorry. Harry's out with Malfoy and we thought it looked urgent."

"Ergh. Where's Ron?"

"George's gone to get him."

"Right." A huge yawn and you dragged yourself upright.

It had been the kind of night that felt so normal and pleasant you hadn't bothered to put too much thought into it.

"Heya, Hermione. I'll get it up for you."

"Thanks…"

You knelt by the hearth and smiled at Charlie as he lit the fire.

You, Harry, Ron and Malfoy had been staying with a number of the Weasleys for just under a week. The fourth member of the group was greeted with something less than hospitality, but other than that it had been the best few days you'd had all year. The house was a deserted muggle one on a rundown council estate and would be near impossible to find were the Death Eaters ready to look, but as it was they were after the Order, who still continued Dumbledore's work with a devotion drawn from desperation and grief.

Pointing your wand at the green glowing flames you brought forth the message. At the sight of the woman in the flames your throat constricted. The auror's hair hung loose in it's natural but rarely seen black, her eyes were dark and brimming and even though she spoke in a broken and coded tongue it was clear she was on the verge of breaking down. Frowning and growing anxious for the first time in almost a week you knelt forward to listen.

"_He's dead, Harry. Remus is dead. They-the" _the woman shuddered with a repressed sob, biting her lip hard to continue with determination._ "They hit the house at three hundred hours. Burst open the windows. Kreature… he found a way to communicate with Bellatrix, we don't know how. There's blood everywhere but we don't know who's it is. Remus went down in the first wave… Molly keeps calling Arthur 'Fabian'. Harry, her brother died almost twenty years ago. We think she was hit with some kind of disillusion but she's convinced she can see him. She won't fight anymore. Keeps saying, "Fabian's here. Fabian knows how to save us.""_ The images glances back into the flames, as if trying not to lose track of what's going on at her end. "_McGonagall is unconscious and Neville hasn't stopped coughing since he first got hit. We drove them back but they've taken it, Harry. The Death Eaters have all the files, everything we know, and they've got the key."_ Her voice rising in desperation she looked straight forward._ "They're coming for you, Harry. You _have to get out_. They're coming."_

With a soft fizzle the message cut out, swallowing Tonks in a swirl of emerald flames. You stared after her and blinked, turning to face the crowd of redheads behind you.

"They're coming." Was all you managed to choke out.

That night had started so similar to any other but within the space of five minutes your life shattered. You sent Charlie after Harry and Malfoy, writing down the message for them to read. You begged with Ginny to leave, told her to go to Hogwarts, to round up the centaurs, to summon every ally they had, but she wouldn't leave Harry. No one would leave Harry.

"Pack up, we're leaving." Was all Harry had to say on the matter.

You all followed. You had no choice; in times like these his words were law.

Malfoy burnt the place to the ground, erasing all traces but ash. You yelled yourself hoarse at him, telling him he'd kill all the surrounding muggles if it spread. He'd told you your priorities were fucked up and if you didn't stop preaching and start running the Death Eaters would get you too. He said death by smoke inhalation was doing the muggles a favour.

These are the memories. The memories you've never lost. The ones that stay with you in the torture and the pain. They haunt your dreams and dredge your soul. You see his eyes and you see their bodies and in the blackness of the cell they are projected before you, bleeding and shouting and telling you to run (because there was no winning, you could hide and fight but you were already lost).

These are the memories that break your heart every minute of every day. And you'd hate him were it not for the fact that he suffers it too. He suffers it and you suffer it and you both take it in silence because these thoughts should never be voiced. Never forgotten but never voiced.

* * *

"Granger?"

"Yeah?"

"Were you in love with Weasley?"

You'd felt something inside you crack (though it makes no sense because you're as broken as it's possible to be), something cracked and it came flooding back. Bloodies sacrifices, bitter pleas, decades of hatred.

"What?" A croak, a plea, a desperate cry for mercy.

"Did you love him?"

And you hate him. You hate him for his stupid words that mean nothing to him and everything to you. For his ability to break you down, to smash you like an ant underfoot. For the way he asks the worst questions when the answers no longer mean a thing.

And you're crying again, and hating yourself for it because tears get you nowhere and you can feel them sticking to your skin and soaking up dirt and filth and making you more foul than you were before when it's all unnecessary because if you just didn't listen to Malfoy you wouldn't have to compete with this kind of self-loathing and pain. (Or perhaps you would, but even then you'd be allowed to suffer it in the dignity of silence.)

"Shut up." You hiss with all the venom of uncertain decades of hate and fear and pain. "Just shut up, Malfoy."

And he falls silent with a rush of indignant breath as though he has no clue what you see through his words, like he doesn't understand why you would rip apart every atom of his body if you had the strength, just for asking that question… for saying that name.

* * *

"Hermione, keep going!" It's yelled between gasps and you feel a hand pushing you forward. You were dropping behind but he'd promised not to let you fall.

A blast of fire to your right and you all know they're upon you.

There was no Final Battle. No blaze of glory or gold-washed red. There was not even the dignity of a head on challenge (but they were Slytherins after all).

Ahead you heard Malfoy swear, muttering a series of Dark spells meant to protect while dragging Harry by the arm.

Burning chest and you ran like you'd never run before, feeling as though your very lungs were sweating, ready to drown you, feeling a burning hand on your wrist, seeing swirling shadows looming over you, Malfoy's guard. The hand tugged you forward and you looked up to meet Ron's eyes, he flashed you an almost-comforting smile but didn't loosen his grip.

"Damn. The anti-aps are up." Hissed Fred as his tugged his sister's hand.

"No shit, genius." Mumbled his twin between pants.

"I can break the barrier." Said a voice, ragged but determined. It was Charlie.

Ron had immediately fired up, refusing angrily with three other siblings backing him. But in the end it only took one word. ("_Harry_.") Ron's stance deflated and they turned to look at their last hope, limply holding Malfoy and Ginny in an effort to stay upright.

Charlie shattered the spell in a burst of golden light and with the compression of apparation they left him.

_You can see them even now. Each face, exactly as you saw them before you had to say goodbye. _

"Hermione, get down!"

"Ron, RON!"

"Hermione… please. We've got to go."

"NO! No. Ron… RON!"

"Hermione!" a tugging on your arm, a different hand, an unsmiling, unfamiliar face.

"No." Almost a whisper as you're pulled away. You should have died there and then. Died avenging the one who gave his life for you. You should have died.

It was hopeless. From the moment Tonks left that message it was hopeless. You couldn't win. You'd all known it from the minute you left the house.

You still didn't have it.

The sixth Horcrux lay out of reach and Voldemort was coming for you.

That was the punchline really. That you had lost before you even picked up your wands. The Order didn't know, even Ginny didn't know. One fragment of a soul was all that stood between you and a possibility of a hope. But that fragment of soul remained and with its partner it tore your world apart. And you're bleeding again. Bleeding for that piece of soul, for those weeks where you rested and didn't search with every last scrap of energy you possessed, bleeding for the truth of the fact you lost and are at their mercy.

You're bleeding and screaming and across the empty blackness you hear him do the same.

And it's funny sometimes.

Because it couldn't be any different if you'd tried. And you still question your existence and his existence and… existence in general. And you still hope even though it's… hopeless. And it strikes you as odd, that meaningless of everything you've done since Ron took the spell for you. You hadn't managed to save Harry, you hadn't even managed to save yourself. You hadn't died but that wasn't exactly of your own accomplishment and he really did die for nothing. And it's funny, because he had been sacrificing himself since first year, when he played knight against giant chess figures, and when it mattered the most he calculated it all wrong. And that is funny. (Because that way it doesn't break your heart as easily or as often, and it isn't as real (not that you'll ever let yourself forget).)

And you're sorry, but focussing on Draco Malfoy makes you far happier than concentrating on Ron Weasley and that is a thousand different kinds of wrong, but all the same, it keeps you going. And while Ron gave you life, Malfoy gives you sanity, and you may hate him for his petty words and stupid questions but you also owe him what's left of the you there was before the world turned dark.

You owe him and it makes you hold your tongue before you blame him for the past. You you're your tongue and sit in silence.

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**AN:** **Dizzydragon** and **tahwekileohcin**: Apologies for the mess up of the last chapter and the repeated postings of chapter 6. In short I _hated _ch6 take one and two and had to obliterate them entirely. Only I didn't and kept a paragraph because I'm lazy and unimaginative.

Additional note to **dizzydragon**: As always, your review was hugely flattering and left me somewhere between thinking you were utterly insane and wanting to hug you for all the nice lovely things you wrote that were so nice and lovely and smile inducing. Yay! But yeah. Point of reply: No, I assure you, there is no plot. Just spontaneous bursts of thought when I happen to be alongside a computer. And it's embarrassing, because having reread I've noticed that most of them contradict. (And I don't hate people either! Honestly. I really have no clue what I'm writing about!)

**Trieste**: Just so you know, this is mainly being updated in all its pointless glory because of your review and your lovely response to my first review of Haven (which I love btw). I'd almost forgotten it existed. Lol. I liked the idea too, it was all original and depressing but then I got all carried away with rants about pointless stuff like cavemen and the moon. Hmm. (P.s. Funny punctuation rocks and I still claim it's not decimating the English language if you know you're doing it, and I'm sorry for the typos, there's a rant entirely dedicated to them below which I urge you not to read.)

I just reread this from the start. And Oh My God. It's utter crap. I hate it. I really, really do. I need to completely revamp the first few chapters – they're embarrassing, like a twelve year old trying to sound mysterious and poetic- I swear – it wasn't even conscious! Oh the shame. There're also the most _ridiculous _amount of typos. Everywhere. I get headaches just trying to decipher half of them. I went back and changed the obvious mistakes, originally planning to make it slightly more HBP compatible and ergh. I feel bad for even posting it. lol. I need a beta but I lack the motivation to go get one, I need to learn to type accurately too. Or just get rid of auto-correct and follow the little red lines. Blegh. Nasty. shudders

But yeah. Please **Review** lovely kind people who are open-minded enough to plough through 7 chapters of pathetically badly written angst to bask in the glory of… a longwinded pointless author's note. Yeah. (Oh come on, you've got to pity me. I sound like a deranged… thing.)


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